D&T

Intent

Central to the vision and ethos at Lakey Lane Primary School, we aim for children to show aspiration, citizenship and equality throughout all curriculum subjects including design technology. We encourage children to reflect upon past and present design technology and aspire to become innovators and risk-takers within the design technology world. We aim for all children to acquire the knowledge, skills and confidence to develop their own ideas when designing and creating in order to make a valuable contribution to society. All children will consider the needs, wants and values of themselves and others and design and create products that reflect this understanding. 

Throughout the design technology curriculum, we follow our school values in order to encourage appropriate learning behaviour both now and in the future.

We aim to deliver our curriculum through 3 key drivers and our 6 school values which underpin our children’s learning.

Ambition -  We aim for design technology to prepare our children and to give them the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences they need to be successful in later life. We aspire to create great designers, architects, chefs and engineers.

Self belief - Children have the confidence to explore, to use creativity and imagination. They are not limited by recipes and instructions but use these as a basis to enhance their own ideas and creations.

Community - We aim for children to become resourceful problem solvers, working individually and as part of a team. We encourage children to recognise the talents around them both within the classroom and within the wider community, and seek to utilise such skills in order to create a range of ideas and solutions within real life contexts.

Respect - Children are expected to respect the contributions made by designers both within the classroom and in the wider world. They understand that their ideas may not match those of others.

Curiosity - Children are motivated to explore products, to find out how they work and use their ideas to design and create their own products.

Kindness - Children give supportive, constructive advice to further improve the products and ideas of others.

Implementation

The design and technology projects are well sequenced to provide a coherent subject scheme that develops children’s designing, planning, making and evaluating skills.

Each project is based around a design and technology subject focus of structures, mechanisms, cooking and nutrition or textiles. The design and technology curriculum’s electronic systems and IT monitoring and control elements are explicitly taught in our science projects to ensure the links between the subjects are highlighted.

Where possible, meaningful links to other areas of the curriculum have been made. For example, the cooking and nutrition project Eat the Seasons is taught alongside the geography project Sow, Grow and Farm. All the projects follow a structure where children are introduced to key concepts and build up knowledge and skills over time, using a more comprehensive range of equipment and building, cutting, joining, finishing and cooking

techniques as they progress through school.

All projects contain focused, practical tasks in the Develop stage to help children gain the knowledge and skills needed to complete their Innovate tasks independently.

Throughout Key Stages 1 and 2, children build up their knowledge and understanding of the iterative design process. They design, make, test and evaluate their products to match specific design criteria and ensure they fit their purpose. Throughout the projects, children are taught to work hygienically and safely.

Early Years

Opportunities are provided to make & create daily through our continuous provision, encouraging independence & self access to resources. This may be enhanced by our topics or led by the children’s interest throughout both Nursery and Reception.

Across the year in Nursery children will:

Explore, build and play with a range of construction kits
Explore battery powered toys
Develop own ideas and explore a variety of resources including blocks & construction kits linked to their interests
Make simple structures, comparing their work to others

Across the year in Reception children will:

Explore, build and play with a range of resources and construction kits including wheels & axles
Construct simple structures and models using a range of materials (eg winch to lift super worm in autumn 2)
Adapt and refine work as they are constructing and making

Key Stage 1

In the autumn term of Year 1, children begin to learn about structures in the project Shade and Shelter before designing and making a shelter. In the spring term project Taxi!, they learn the term ‘mechanism’ and assemble and test wheels and axles. In the summer term, children begin to learn about food sources in the project Chop, Slice and Mash and use simple preparation techniques to create a supermarket sandwich.

In the autumn term of Year 2, children learn more about food in the project Remarkable Recipes, where they find out about food sources, follow recipes and learn simple cooking techniques. In the spring term children begin to develop their understanding of textiles in Cut, Stitch and Join. They learn to sew a simple running stitch, use pattern pieces and add simple embellishments. They also continue to learn about mechanisms in the project Push and Pull by using sliders, levers and linkages in products.

In the summer term, project Beach Hut, children develop their knowledge of structures further, learning to cut, join and strengthen wood or the first time.

Lower Key Stage 2

In the autumn term of Year 3, children continue to learn about food, understanding the concept of a balanced diet and making healthy meals in the project Cook Well, Eatwell. In the spring term project Making it Move, children extend their understanding of mechanisms by exploring cams and using joining and finishing techniques to make automaton toys. In the summer term project Greenhouse, they continue to develop their knowledge of structures, using triangles and braces for strength. They design and build a greenhouse, using

their understanding of opacity and transparency and the needs of plants from science learning to inform their design.

In the autumn term of Year 4, children continue to develop their understanding of food in the project Fresh Food, Good Food. They learn about food safety and preservation technologies before designing and making packaging for a healthy snack. During the spring term project Tomb Builders, they build on their knowledge of mechanisms, learning about six simple machines and using their knowledge to create a lifting or moving device prototype. They also explore and use electrical systems and IT monitoring and control in the science project Electrical Circuits and Conductors for the first time.

In the summer term project Functional and Fancy Fabrics, children continue to explore textiles, learning about the work of William Morris before designing, embellishing and finishing a fabric sample.

Upper Key Stage 2

In the autumn term of Year 5, children deepen their understanding of mechanisms by studying pneumatic systems in the project Moving Mechanisms. They learn about the forces at play and create a prototype for a functional, pneumatic machine. In the spring term project Eat the Seasons, children continue to explore food and nutrition, learning about seasonal foods and the benefits of eating seasonally. In the summer term, they learn more about structures in the project Architecture, studying the history of architecture and developing new ways to create structural strength and stability. They use computer-aided design and consolidate their making skills to produce scale models. They also explore the electrical conductivity of materials before making products incorporating circuits in the science project Properties and Changes of Materials.

In the autumn term of Year 6, children learn about processed and whole foods in the project Food for Life, creating healthy menus from unprocessed foods. In the spring term project Engineer, children consolidate their knowledge of structures, joining and strengthening techniques and electrical systems by completing a bridge-building challenge. In the summer term project Make Do and Mend, they extend their knowledge of textiles by learning new stitches to join fabrics and using pattern pieces to create a range of products.

Impact

Our DT Curriculum, allows our children, as designers, to develop skills and attributes that they will use throughout their school lives and beyond. By the time they leave us; confidence, creativity, self-reflection, perseverance and the importance of planning and forward-thinking are all embedded within them.

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Pupils’ reflections and verbal discussions about their learning; evaluations at the end of each unit to assess their own development as well as pupil interviews with school leaders.
• Celebrating pupils’ work at the end of each project through galleries and demonstrations to other members of our school community.
• Reflection and evaluation of standards achieved against the planned outcomes.